Rat Pack Through Rider’s Eyes

So after my recap of all the Rat Packs yesterday, I get a text from my buddy Rider.  He wants to elaborate further on his numerous adventures each year, so who am I to say no!?  So the following are all true, 100%.  I think my friend Kyle Kelly said it best, “if this is what he remembers from those nights, imagine what he forgot!?”  So true.  As usual, if I have any comments they will be in bold.  Enjoy!

Year 1:  White Castle

Jeff Kleeman had this awesome idea for a party (thank you!) – and had no idea it would be a decade long tradition (um me either).  This classy party idea gave me the opportunity to finally bust out something I’d been waiting 5 years to crack.  When I was 16, I may have acquired a bottle of Dom Perignon through means which I cannot discuss here.  Never had an event present itself that seemed worthy of the bottle until Rat Pack.  Thus started a not-so-cheap tradition of me bringing fancy champaign to the annual get together.

Back to the story, I somehow ended up in Kleeman’s bed making out with arguably the finest girl at the party, when out of nowhere, that prick had the nerve to enter his own bedroom and discover us.  Sadly, I did not get to continue the fun.  After we hit the bars, I ended up back at the Double Barrel but no one was there.  I thought maybe there was an after bar going on at White Castle (another house the crew frequented) so I took off to find it.  I was buzzed up to the point that I had trouble reading street signs.

Found White Castle.  Went in.  Opened door number 1 and saw a girl sleeping on the couch.  Thought to myself “this must be Mary’s room”.  Opened door number 2.  Nobody there.  Bedroom door shut, but comfy looking futon available.  “This must be Alex’s room” I figured.  Took up residence on the futon.  Woke up to find that someone had given me a pillow and blanket and Alex was calling me.  Conversation went a little like this:

Alex: “Where you at man?”

Me:  “I’m in your room”

Alex: “Well, you weren’t when I left this morning”

Me:  “Hold on…. Holy shit! I don’t know anyone in these pictures!  I gotta call you back man”

Turns out I had not found White Castle.  I had found a white apartment building.  Door number 1 with girl on the couch was some stranger’s apartment.  Guy behind door number 2 recognized me from the business school, gave me a pillow and blanket, and went to work.  I later bought that man some beer and thanked him.

 

Year 2:  Construction

Pretty normal Rat Pack.  Had definitely caught on and had the rumblings of a tradition.  First year I paid for my own bottle of Dom.  Jeff is right, I woke up in my car covered in mud.  That’s right, in a suit covered in mud.  At that point I was just happy my car was still in front of Kleeman’s house as nothing good could have resulted had I driven it the night before.  Which leads us to the mud.  One of the ladies attending the event wanted to go home and I offered to walk her.  On our way, we came upon a street under construction.  It was muddy and stretched as far as we could see in either direction so we needed to cross it.  I offered to carry her.  She jumped on my back and I trudged across.  During my drunken stumble home, I managed to help the mud find the rest of me and I found my car.

 

Year 3:  Church

Jeff forgets to mention that this one was held in a house next to a church.  I made it back to the house and onto a couch.  Somehow I’m the first and only one up when a pastor walks in through the open front door.  He assumes I live there and proceeds to lecture me about how every Sunday they have to pick beer bottles/cans out of the church yard and how troubling it is for parents to have to walk their children past our demolished and littered front yard each week.  He informs me that I could use a little God in my life and that service started in 30 minutes.

 

Year 4:  I Think I Work Here?

As Jeff mentioned, we had pizzas at the local bar that was basically a second home to many in the group called The Char Bar.  Started out innocently enough with me behind the bar, running the pizza ovens to keep that shit flowing.  Manager wasn’t too pleased when I started pouring myself drinks and I may have decided I was a bartender for others when I wasn’t.  And I may have gotten punched in the face by him.  Things got pretty hazy that night after one too many Kleeman specials.

 

Year 5:  Ridiculousness

Great house party.  Fantastic attendance.  We were definitely the biggest deal in town.  We end up at the Char, the groups second home.  I decide I should stop by Carey’s (another bar) for a drink.  I have a little trouble leaving Carey’s and trip on my way out the door.  I was sleepy so I decided not to get up.  Just laying there in a face-down-crucified pose.  Next thing I know, there is an ambulance pulled up and a stretcher on the sidewalk.  They are trying to get me on the stretcher and I am adamantly refusing medical attention.  The cops really want me to take medical attention and this is when I got feisty and
asked the cop if he “wanted to start something”.  He didn’t really want to, but he also didn’t just walk away.

After a tense moment another Rat Packer jumped in and tried to take custody of me.  As the cop was telling him he was too drunk to take responsibility for me, a random guy I’ve never seen before pushes past the cops and gives me one of those bro handshake/one-arm-hug things and starts talking to me like we are long lost friends.  He turns to the cops and says: “Yo, you guys giving my buddy trouble?  I got this.”  They ask if he has a sober ride, and right on cue his friend in a black truck pulls up to the bar.  We get in and take off.  He turns to me and says: “My name is Chris, I just couldn’t let the cops fuck with you like that man”.  We go to his house, bullshit over a beer and I crashed on the couch.

I wake up to a 3 year old girl tapping me on the shoulder and asking me if I want to meet her turtles.  A lady walks into the room and introduces herself as Grandma.  So I had a beer with Grandma and met the girl’s turtles while waiting for Chris to wake up.  Chris gets up, talks to Grandma and the girl for a while.  Grandma says she is going to give the girls a bath and leaves the room.  Chris looks at me and asks  “You wanna get a shot?”.  I agree and we take off.  It’s Sunday so nothing is open.  He drops me off at the house where I started out the previous day and I never saw Chris again.

I enter the house and no one is stirring yet, so I have another beer.  A couple guys wake up and we take off and have breakfast at the Eagle’s Club.  Good food.  Much needed.  We head back to the house and they head back to bed.  I’m bored so I wander outside.  Across the street a see a guy picking up sticks in his front yard.  I recognized the guy as this dude that was totally in awe of our group the night before and went so far as to give himself 3 wardrobe changes during the yard games portion of the evening.

So I cross the street and start picking up sticks with him.  He stops and asks me “Do you want to have a beer in the crow’s nest?”  I don’t know what this means, but I agree.  We go into his kitchen and he grabs a couple beers.  We go up to his bedroom, he opens the window, pushes 2 chairs through, and crawls out.  I follow him and discover this little patch of shingles and roof outside his window.  “I call this the Crow’s Nest” he tells me and I reply “Cool”.  We sit there enjoying a beer and the morning until a member of the crew, Tony, pulls up to the house where the party started.

Tony: “Rider is that you?”

Me: “Yep”

Tony: “What are you doing?”

Me: “Having a beer in the Crow’s Nest”

Tony: “Okay… We’re all meeting downtown for lunch”

So I bid my host farewell, thanked him for the beer and headed downtown – where I got to relive this ridiculous evening over and over every time someone joined the table.

 

Year 6: No Story Allowed

This year I decided that I no longer wanted to continue the tradition of me topping my last year’s story.  I was very tame.  Only story is that I got to ruin Kleeman’s night.  At the end of the night, after behaving myself all night, I ended up chilling with a girl in my hotel room.  I was hoping it was going somewhere, she had other plans.  She turned to me and asked “Where is Kleeman?”  So I walked her to Kleeman’s hotel room.  He did not want this.  He was not pleased.

 

Year 7:  I Like Trees

First party bus year!  Kleeman is right, this was a fantastic party.  I was prepared this year.  Had a hotel room reserved.  Life was good.  Unfortunately I had two problems.  First, I’m not a big fan of spending money on things I do not enjoy – like taxis.  So I decided to walk to the hotel.  My other problem is that I’m absolutely terrible with directions when drunk.  This night was no exception.  After stumbling around town FOREVER, I decided I should get some sleep.  Now, I’m no dummy and this isn’t my first rodeo, so I know it’s not a good idea to pass out in the open.  People frown upon that.  So I found a nice apartment complex with some great pine tree coverage and crawled out of sight to take a nap.

 

Year 8: Badge Of Shame

Party bus #2. If you are not in a party bus mood, pounding lots of alcohol very quickly does not help. I blame Sam and believe this may have been her last crazy night of drinking with the crew. Terrible influence – not that I really need any help in that department. So I got far too drunk far too early and ended up being belligerent, handsy, ass-slappy. Not a good look for anyone. I was sent home early.  And in line with my aforementioned problems, had a long walk home.

 

Year 9: Deadwood

This one hit both extremes. Terrible first night, great second night. My “story” story doesn’t even occur on Rat Pack – it happened the night before. Not a good time in my life. I had shaken things up pretty good, recently relocated without any solid plans (just a wish and a prayer), was broke, car less, and jobless. Not a good time to be drinking heavily, but hey, it a tradition.

Since I was in a pissy mood, I decided that in addition to the booze, I should probably do some elicit substances as well. We won’t go into specifics, but I’ll say it didn’t live up to its name and I was not a happier person. I did get messed up enough to lose everyone and have no idea where I was. Alex, bless his soul, was trying to help me. However, when you tell someone you are at a hotel you are not really at, it is very hard for them to help you. Also when you think you are at a hotel you are not really at, the front desk has a hard time finding any of your friends’ rooms.

Eventually the hotel/casino staff got tired of dealing with me and asked me to leave. I did. But still convinced it was the place I was supposed to be, I tried to sneak in the side door and hide out in the men’s room. I am not as sneaky as I think and was asked to leave again. This time they followed me outside. As I headed across the street to a park bench, casino management hollered out that I wasn’t allowed to stay there either. So I pretended to make my way down the street while actually circling back to the backside of the hotel. At this point it starts to rain. If you’ve never been to Deadwood, I can assure you that outside of a hotel room, there is really no shelter from rain.

One more clarifier here, all rooms in Deadwood were sold out that weekend, it’s not like I could have just gotten one at whatever hotel I happened upon and call it a night. So I found the next best option. A nice inconspicuous spot under a stairwell behind a skid steer. I spend an uncomfortable restless night crouching (as the ground was wet) and avoiding as much rain as possible.

The second night (actual Rat Pack) was a really fun night. I had a great time, won some money, and had a warm/dry place to stay (thanks Morgan).

 

Year 10: Vegas

Sadly this year will stand as my last consecutive Rat Pack. So I will drop out of the very exclusive group (like 3 of us) who can say they’ve been to every Rat Pack. I marry people now and have a ceremony to officiate that conflicts with Rat Pack this year. But I did make Vegas. Vegas, Ridiculousness, and White Castle are my 3 favorite Rat Packs. Vegas also forced me to put the capstone on the Dom Perignon tradition. Years back I made a commitment that if we made it to year 10 and we took Rat Pack to Vegas, I would bring a bottle of Cristal. So I did. Actually not to terribly much more expensive than the Dom and in my opinion the Dom is a better champaign.

Much of what happened in Vegas needs to stay in Vegas. Kleeman was forced to stick with no comment and I can’t say much either. I did have a fantastic time and for the first time in Rat Pack history, I made responsible decisions (mostly). I can say I turned down sex and lost my pants. The real story of Rat Pack 10 belongs to another (a young up and coming me I’m told) who started Friday night with $40; played it up to $5,000; returned the following day to continue the run up to $18,000; and finished the trip -$4,000, but that’s not my story to tell…..

Chris

And that’s it!  That was Rider’s recap of his Rat Pack adventures.  Hope you enjoyed, I sure as hell did.  Later in the week look for our celebrity post and a few more stories to be posted.  Thanks for reading! – Jeff Kleeman